Thank You, Bonnaroo

Last night, after the Dave Matthews Band closed the Bonnaroo Festival, and the crowd started to leave, I heard a young woman say in a quiet, earnest voice, almost a whisper, “Thank you, Bonnaroo!” Who was she addressing, exactly? The spirit of the music? Some pagan god? The brand?

Earlier in the day, I brought up this question—What exactly is Bonnaroo, and what can it be?—with the four partners in Superfly Productions, the co-founders of the festival. One of them, Jonathan Mayers, told me, “We see ourselves as curators, or tastemakers, if you will, programming a festival for the iPod generation—people who may have many different types of music on the same playlist, and don’t mind mixing genres.”

“But people still need filters,” Rick Farman, another partner, added, “and we are a big filter, and a trusted source of music for our fans.”

Mayers: “What we trying to do now is figure how to expand our influence to other platforms, without losing our authenticity.”